World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’ • Hacker News Board

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#51

Post by NikolaNovak » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:50 AM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #48

akersten wrote: post #31

Take a minute to think, on this Sunday night, about how much personal time you've had this week. You've most likely spent 5 of the last 7 days making someone else richer, at the expense of an incredible toll on your body and mind: an artificially early wake-up to an alarm, a late-night frozen pizza dinner because there's no time to cook and clean up for yourself, and you're finally sitting down getting ready to relax…

> the hell that is the modern salaried work week. Salaried work is by far the most lenient way to make money. Any other venture: a small business, a startup, an executive position, etc is way harder and more demanding. In any case, what would be great is for the market to offer 4 day work weeks to those who wish it at the best market price, and give 5 days to the ones that want 5 days.

>> Salaried work is by far the most lenient way to make money. Any other venture: a small business, a startup, an executive position, etc is way harder and more demanding.

I've done both and I don't believe I'd agree with making it a generalization. At best, there may be some averages and medians, but it is not a universal statement that "all salaried work is more lenient than all small business / startup work".

I've done a successful small photography business. It was way way way less stressful, more satisfying than office work, and I can only imagine how much better than e.g. Amazon warehouse work.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#52

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:51 AM UTC

akersten wrote: post #35

seibelj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are tired of making someone else rich, you could start your own business. But that’s a lot of work, and as someone who is anti-work, I don’t think that’s possible for you and your comrades. But the option is there!

Like all movements, there's more to it than just the name - don't take it too literally: working for myself is the ultimate goal! And if I ever do find success enough to require employees, I could never imagine asking them to spend 71% of their week thinking about me and my problems. Maybe it's easy to daydream egalitarian - but I think we as a society can do better for each other.

Many of us work 40 hours in 5 days. There are 168 hours in a week. That's 24% of the week, not 71%.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#53

Post by ambicapter » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:56 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #7

I work in a field (military) where "overtime" isn't a thing. We can and do work 24+hour shifts without any extra pay. Even during peacetime, if we need to work 16-hour days every day for a month we can do that without any financial cost. We can also be sent home at noon every day without diminishing our wages a penny. That absolute flexibility does not reduce stress. With no standard office hours we face constant neg…

You're in the military and you can't call "Bill" in for a meeting? This is not how I picture the military. I was under the impression push comes to shove, if your superior says you have to be somewhere, you _will_ be there, regardless of what its for.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#54

Post by koch » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:57 AM UTC

It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week.

> I enjoy working 5 days a week, it gives me more time to ...

Ok, by all means, keep doing that? If you have this position you are probably already working on the weekend anyway. You can live (thrive, even!) in a society that has a 4 day week and still work 5 days. Go for it.

> It'll never happen / It's a pipe dream

So was women's rights, civil rights, the current 40 hour week, etc. etc. Idk why the idea needs to be dismissed just because it isn't the norm now.

> Seems like a slippery slope, what's next, a 3 day week??

Don't we want to be on such a slope!?! Do we think we'll be working 5 days a week 100 years from now? Is a 5 day week the best we can do??

99% of us are working for someone else, it boggles my mind how much opposition there is from workers to working less and getting more of our own time back.

If I'm ever in the fortunate position of being able to hire people, we'll have a four day week.

I'm keeping track of the companies that have a four day week here: https://thelistofcompanies.com

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#55

Post by conanbatt » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #51

conanbatt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the hell that is the modern salaried work week. Salaried work is by far the most lenient way to make money. Any other venture: a small business, a startup, an executive position, etc is way harder and more demanding. In any case, what would be great is for the market to offer 4 day work weeks to those who wish it at the best market price, and give 5 days to the ones that want 5 days.

>> Salaried work is by far the most lenient way to make money. Any other venture: a small business, a startup, an executive position, etc is way harder and more demanding. I've done both and I don't believe I'd agree with making it a generalization. At best, there may be some averages and medians, but it is not a universal statement that "all salaried work is more lenient than all small business / startup work". I've…

If you replace salaried with hourly, a change that is purely administrative, you increase your risk because your income is not pooled.

Salary is mainly a way to pool lots of resources and insure them for sickness, rotation, leaves, etc. It is literally the risk-averse option.

You want to compare salaried with its not-salaried version, not any salaried position vs any other non-salaried position.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#56

Post by aero-glide2 » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

As long as the government doesn't make it mandatory, don't see any problems with this.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#57

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:04 AM UTC

SilverRed wrote: post #32

ashtonkem wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument was used against a lot of things that turned out to be a good thing, like the 40 hour work week. What’s your suggesting other than naysaying this trial?

They raise a good point. I would expect a huge boost in productivity during a trial period as workers are hyped about the change and want to prove it works. But that they may eventually wear out and return to normal but with less hours now. I don't think OP is suggesting that the findings are outright wrong, but that long term studies are required to know exactly how things play out. We have so many short term trial…

I can attest to a pattern of management introducing a change and realizing substantial benefits that don’t hold up over time. For whatever reason, the initial boost isn’t sustained and some other change is introduced in order to boost numbers and the process repeats.

Now I personally would love a shorter work week. I actually think much of the 8-hour workday is chock full of non productive time that can be cut safely. But I see what the other user is getting at. Just because this study produced great results it doesn’t mean that this change produces sustainable effects.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#58

Post by insert_coin » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

koch wrote: post #54

It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week. > I enjoy working 5 days a week, it gives me more time to ... Ok, by all means, keep doing that? If you have this position you are probably already working on the weekend anyway. You can live (thrive, even!) in a society that has a 4 day week and still work 5 days. Go for it. > It'll never happen / It's a pipe dream So was women's rights, civil righ…

> It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week.

No one is arguing against a shorter work week, that's just misrepresenting the position. Furthermore, you've been able to offer 4 day work weeks to your employees since forever, no one is stopping you. In fact you can offer them 3 days work week right now since you are so benevolent. Why don't you offer them 1 day work weeks while you are at it? You should make a list for that.

The pushback is against the idea of government decreeing the number of days you are allowed to work.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#59

Post by manmal » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

As a parent, I’m wondering whether a four day work week will carry over to the school week, too. When I was at school (this has stopped since) we had school on Saturday even, for two years. This was not great! Nearly all the arguments I’ve seen pro four hour work week, would also apply to students.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#60

Post by kqr » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

jackson1442 wrote: post #28

irrational wrote: post #19

> four nine hour days How many of you are salaried, yet your hours are tracked? My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day. A few decades ago, my first job out of college did track hours. That was pure hell.

We track hours at my job but it’s not anything super granular. We have to bill clients for hours, so we track them ourselves but it basically comes down to getting 40 hours-worth of work done each week. I basically just figure out what percent of each day I spent on each project and apportion my timecard appropriately. While it’d be nice to not track, it works well enough. I make hourly but can work as much (or as li…

> We have to bill clients for hours, so we track them ourselves

You do not need to track hours to bill clients for their hours. This myth is awfully demotivating for so many people I hate that it still is the default.

> I basically just figure out what percent of each day I spent on each project and apportion my timecard appropriately.

And you've basically figured out the better way on your own.

As Tippett figured out and published in 1934, if you want to know how much time is spent on something, you don't record every hour for every person. That's insanely expensive and demeaning. Not to mention that self-reported hours are very biased toward what's perceived as important work.

Instead, you do work sampling/snap counting. Have a person show up at random times and record what's going on at that time. The portion of times an activity was recorded corresponds to the portion of time spent on that activity.

(The more tech friendly version might be an email or instant message asking what you just worked on, sent at a random time and meant to be answered just as you finish up something and move onto the next thing.)